The Stone Bride

The Legend

Legenda

When it rained, she wept. That was the first thing anyone learned about the Stone Bride of Key Lane, and for most visitors the last as well, since no more would fit into a photo. Above the door of house number seven, in the keystone of the doorway, sat the head of a young woman in grey sandstone, hardly bigger than a loaf of bread, her hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck. As soon as it rained, two dark tracks ran from the corners of her eyes over her cheeks down to her chin, and the corners of her mouth, worn soft by the weather, drew downwards as well, as if she had seen it coming.

Kalau hujan, ia menangis. Itulah hal pertama yang orang ketahui tentang Pengantin Batu di Gang Kunci, dan bagi sebagian besar pengunjung juga hal terakhir, sebab lebih dari itu tak muat dalam sebuah foto. Di atas pintu rumah nomor tujuh, pada batu kunci portalnya, bertengger kepala seorang perempuan muda dari batu pasir kelabu, hampir tak lebih besar daripada sebuah roti tawar bulat, rambutnya diikat menjadi sanggul di tengkuk. Begitu hujan turun, dua jalur gelap mengalir dari sudut matanya melewati pipi sampai ke dagu, dan sudut bibirnya, yang sudah halus terkikis cuaca, ikut tertarik ke bawah, seolah-olah ia sudah melihat semua ini akan datang.

On this Tuesday in October Tereza Nováková stood beneath her for what was, at a cautious estimate, the three-thousandth time. She held up the yellow umbrella by which her groups recognised her, waited until the last of them had come up the lane, and lowered her voice, as she always did, at exactly this spot.

Pada Selasa di bulan Oktober itu, Tereza Nováková berdiri di bawahnya untuk, menurut perkiraan yang hati-hati, kali yang ketiga ribu. Ia mengangkat payung kuningnya, yang membuat rombongannya mengenalinya, menunggu sampai orang terakhir pun selesai mendaki gang, lalu merendahkan suaranya, seperti selalu ia lakukan tepat di tempat ini.

“In the spring of 1848,” she said, “Anežka, the daughter of the master of the house, was engaged to a raftsman. He brought timber from the Bohemian Forest down the Vltava, and on the day before the wedding the raft arrived without him. Anežka waited at this door every evening, for forty years. When she died, the stonemason immortalised her face up here. And ever since, whenever it rains …” She pointed upwards, and twenty-three phones rose with her finger.

“Pada musim semi 1848,” katanya, “Anežka, putri pemilik rumah, bertunangan dengan seorang pembawa rakit. Ia membawa kayu dari Hutan Bohemia menyusuri Sungai Vltava, dan sehari sebelum pernikahan rakit itu tiba tanpa dirinya. Anežka menunggu di pintu ini setiap malam, selama empat puluh tahun. Ketika ia meninggal, sang pemahat batu mengabadikan wajahnya di atas sini. Dan sejak itu, setiap kali hujan turun …” Ia menunjuk ke atas, dan dua puluh tiga ponsel terangkat mengikuti jarinya.

It was not raining. It had not rained for eleven days, and the bride, to be honest, looked only slightly put out, like someone who has waited too long for a bus. Tereza knew the disappointment in their faces and had a sentence for it: anyone who wanted to see her weep would simply have to come back. Most of them did not come back, but they wrote it in their reviews, and the reviews brought the next ones.

Hujan tidak turun. Sudah sebelas hari hujan tidak turun, dan sang pengantin, terus terang, hanya tampak sedikit murung, seperti orang yang terlalu lama menunggu bus. Tereza mengenal kekecewaan di wajah-wajah itu dan punya satu kalimat untuknya: siapa yang ingin melihatnya menangis, ya harus datang lagi. Sebagian besar tidak datang lagi, tetapi mereka menuliskannya dalam ulasan mereka, dan ulasan-ulasan itu mendatangkan rombongan berikutnya.

That Anežka had never existed was known in Prague to one single person, and she was at that moment holding the yellow umbrella. Tereza had invented her six years ago, on a wet afternoon, back when she still offered art-history tours that nobody booked, and a group from Ohio had asked her, in front of this very door, why the woman up there was crying. She had not known the truth and had not felt like admitting it. So she had let a raftsman drown. It had been, as would turn out, the most successful quarter of an hour of her working life.

Bahwa Anežka tak pernah ada hanya diketahui satu orang di Praha, dan orang itu sedang memegang payung kuning. Tereza mengarangnya enam tahun lalu, pada suatu sore yang basah, ketika ia masih menawarkan tur sejarah seni yang tak dipesan siapa pun, dan sebuah rombongan dari Ohio bertanya kepadanya, tepat di depan pintu ini, mengapa perempuan di atas sana menangis. Ia tak tahu jawabannya dan tak ingin mengakuinya. Maka ia membiarkan seorang pembawa rakit tenggelam. Itu ternyata menjadi seperempat jam paling sukses dalam kehidupan kerjanya.

By now the Stone Bride was in three guidebooks, in two of them with the wrong year. Other guides retold her, some with a second lover, one even with poison. Wedding couples from Seoul and Milan had themselves photographed beneath the doorway, and across the lane Radek Bureš, with whom Tereza had once almost moved in, had turned his former pawnshop into the Café of the Weeping Bride , in whose window lay a cake of the same name: poppy seed, with an icing that ran in the warmth.

Kini Pengantin Batu tercantum di tiga buku panduan wisata, dua di antaranya dengan tahun yang salah. Pemandu lain menceritakannya kembali, sebagian dengan kekasih kedua, satu bahkan dengan racun. Pasangan pengantin dari Seoul dan Milan berfoto di bawah portal itu, dan di seberang, Radek Bureš, yang pernah hampir tinggal serumah dengan Tereza, telah mengubah bekas rumah gadainya menjadi Kafe Pengantin yang Menangis , dengan sebuah kue bernama sama di jendelanya: kue biji poppy dengan lapisan gula yang meleleh kalau hangat.